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Dr Verbic's research interests are in various smart grid issues, with special emphasis on distributed energy resources (DERs), in particular their integration into the system and participation in ancillary services. Lately, Dr Verbic has been mostly focusing on aggregation and control of DERs at the residential level, including smart appliances and electric vehicles, proposing ways how DERs can be used in balancing the increasingly volatile generation, dominated by intermittent renewable generation.

Use of thermal masses as virtual energy storage

Summary

This project exploits the possibility of using thermal masses of residential buildings as a virtual energy storage. By proper manipulation of heating, ventilation and air conditioning, the energy consumption can be shifted from periods of high demand to periods of low demand.

Supervisor(s)

Research Location

Program Type

Masters/PHD

Synopsis

It is widely recognized that energy storage will play a vital role in the transition from the conventional electric power systems to a Smart Grid. The energy storage will be needed to serve as an energy buffer that will enable efficient integration of various inherently intermittent energy sources. All the competing storage technologies are still relatively expensive, which hinder a widespread deployment. The search for the alternatives is therefore obvious. One possible alternative is to use electric vehicles (EVs) that, when parked, present a free-to-use storage option. However, battery cycling is considered a serious issue, as it severely reduces the battery's life time, which, in turn, has severe economic implications for the car owners. As an alternative, this project proposes to use thermal masses of residential buildings as a means of energy storage. Such storage will have minimal running costs. If the comfort level of the occupants is kept at the desired level, exploiting this option will be hardly noticed by the occupants. Almost every household has some appliances that are physically connected to a thermal system. Examples include heating, ventilation and air conditioning, refrigerators, and heat pumps. Therefore, such units can be switched off for certain amount of time without significantly affecting the temperature of the underlying physical system, i.e. without affecting comfort levels of the occupants. The key to a successful realization of this idea is in predicting the behaviour of the underlying physical system.